Columns

The S.C. Public Service Commission members who approved nine rate hikes for the failed V.C. Summer nuclear project have performed flawlessly in their six-figure jobs – at least in the eyes of the legislative committee that essentially controls them.
The S.C. Policy Council’s online publication The Nerve checked annual work-performance reviews done by the State Regulation of Public Utilities Review Committee (PURC) for fiscal 2014 through 2016. We found the exact cut-and-paste glowing language for all seven PSC members.

Editor’s note: The writer’s son, York County Sheriff’s Deputy Brent McCants, was shot to death while on duty Sept. 25, 1992.

Detective Mike Doty was killed while on duty with the York County Sheriff’s Office.
My heart goes out to his mother, siblings and friends. A parent never gets over this kind of hurt. It’s half of you. You had this child.
My son Brent was 23 years old. Mike was 37. So young.

Editor’s note: Mick Mulvaney, the White House budget director and former congressman from Indian Land, was back on the Sunday talk shows this week with an insider’s view of the first government shutdown since 2013. Here are excerpts of his interview with John Dickerson on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”

John Dickerson: The president said this shutdown would be a present for him. His son Eric Trump said this is good for the administration. Why is it good for the administration?

I’m a New Jersey native who retired and moved to Indian Land in 2014.
After looking in York, Union and Mecklenburg counties, I finally decided on settling here in Indian Land. I found a thriving community with all the services my family needed, but less government and taxes than the other three counties offered.

I read the S.C. Education Department’s “Committee on Educator Recruitment and Retention Recommendations” with great interest when it was released Dec. 31.
The first school district to retain the services of my company, E Squared, to help them recruit teachers was in South Carolina, and I’ve worked with about 15 districts across the state, large and small, though never with Lancaster County.

As an elected official, I have tried to maintain neutrality in my comments about Indian Land incorporation. To incorporate or to not incorporate is an issue that needs to be decided by the voters within the proposed incorporation area.
However, I do feel that the information presented to the public needs to be accurate. In conversations with Voters for a Town of Indian Land (VTIL) members going back to 2015, I have pointed out that the budget needed to be realistic and information needs to be presented accurately.

If 2017 is bookmarked in history, it will be as the year of reassessment.
During the year we’ve been urged to reassess the meaning of sexual harassment. We’ve been urged to reassess what is “normal” conduct for a president of the United States. And, sometimes with violence, we’ve been confronted with a reassessment of those who are honored by statues and monuments in public places.

Girls on the Run Tri County is working with the J. Marion Sims Foundation to expand its middle-school program, Heart and Sole, in Lancaster County Schools.
Heart and Sole is Girls on the Run’s program that meets the unique needs of girls in sixth to eighth grade. The program addresses the whole girl – body, brain, heart, spirit and social – in a positive space where girls can learn about themselves, explore new ideas, develop empathy and strengthen connections with their peers and coaches.

The world isn’t a perfect place. It has poverty, pollution, violence, and the list continues.
I have a dream to better the world that we live in. Like the great Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream to have racial equality, I have a dream to help the world and its people.
I want to make it known to everyone that we can all do better at making the world safer and cleaner. l want to let people know that we can get rid of poverty, violence and hatred in the world to become at peace with one another.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that,” said Martin Luther King Jr. “I have decided to stick to love. Hate is too great of a burden to bear.”
For many years, our nation has lacked peace and unity. From war to segregation to this present time, Dr. King’s dream sometimes seems to become a nightmare.
As we stand collectively in the midst of controversy and challenge, it often seems the dream of unity and peace has been forgotten.